1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an operator progammable oven with a menu selection feature for cooking food.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional electric ovens usually are designed to cook food by heating the oven to a set temperature and using a timer to notify the operator when the time is completed. The temperature and cooking time have to be set each time a food product is to be cooked. Ovens of this type are slow and use a lot of energy and are inefficient particularly if a small food product is to be cooked. One type of electrical oven for cooking pizza is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,695,668.
Brief Description of the Oven of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/281,041
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/281,041 discloses an electrically operated oven for cooking food such as pizza which can cook food quickly and economically and which can be programmed to cook different types of food at different times and temperatures. The oven comprises a housing and support means located in the housing for supporting the food to be cooked. A lower electrical heating element is located below the support means. Two laterally spaced apart upper electrical heating elements are supported above the support means and the food to be cooked. Means is provided for supplying electrical power to the lower electrical heating element and to the two upper electrical heating elements. Control means including a programmable controller is provided for controlling electrical power applied to the lower heating element and to the two upper electrical heating elements to allow electrical power to be applied to each of the two upper electrical heating elements simultaneously or separately.
Although a menu selection process as previously programmed in the controller is useful in many operations, it does not allow the system to be operated fast enough for use in a fast paced, fast food operation. The manner in which the controller was previously programmed required 16 programming procedures to change form one menu to another and back to the original menu. In a fast paced, fast food operation, this method would have been too time consuming and would have led to many operator errors. For example, an operator may want to change the cooking procedure/menu from pizza, which is 2xc2xd minutes cooking time, to a calzone cooking procedure/menu, which is 4 minutes cooking time. This would be an 8 step procedure. If the operator did not switch back to the pizza menu, which is another 8 steps, and another operator puts a pizza in the oven, it would burn because the oven would be programmed for a calzone a 4 minute cooking procedure, and the operator would not know it. The 16 step procedure would have to be performed to change the cooking menu for the three different cooking zones which would result in 48 steps.
In accordance with the invention the controller of the oven is programmed to contain a plurality of menus with each menu being assigned given cooking time and power level parameters for controlling electrical power to the upper heating elements for operating these heating elements either separately or together. A first selection means is provided for selecting any one of the menus for cooking purposes and zone selection means is provided for selecting the desired cooking zone left, right or a combination of the left and right zones. After the cooking process is completed, the controller automatically defaults back to a given menu, for example menu one. Thus the procedure is reduced to two steps to change to a new cooking procedure i.e. selecting the desired menu and then selecting the desired cooking zone, left, right, or a combination of the left and right cooking zones.
The menu selection process may be employed for ovens that employ a single upper heating element or more than two upper heating elements whether the heating elements are electrical resistance heating elements or other types such as microwave devices.